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Thread: The Tallest Woman In The World Dies

  1. #1
    Unregistered Bringthetruth's Avatar
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    The Tallest Woman In The World Dies

    By Frank Thomas Croisdale
    In the end, she was just too big for this world.




    Sandy Allen died recently from what is believed to be complications from a blood infection and diabetes. She was 53 years old. Allen stood 7-foot-7 and was recognized by Guinness World Records as the tallest woman in the world.

    During her lifetime Allen achieved the type of fame that few covet. She was known not for what she had achieved, but simply for what she was. Guinness might cite that under the category of height, but in reality "different" may have been a better classification.

    I met Sandy Allen when I was 14. She worked at the Guinness Museum of World Records in Niagara Falls, Ont. My friends and I used to pedal our bikes across the border and spend a July day swimming at Dufferin Islands. Later we would head over to Clifton Hill before making our way back to the United States. After a mandatory trip through the incomparable Houdini Museum, we'd stroll along the honkytonk expanse, taking in the sights and sounds that had lured many a tourist dollar from its hiding place in the depths of a pocketbook.

    Sandy stood out from the other offerings along the street like a cheetah against a white backdrop. It wasn't just her height that grabbed your attention, it was the fact that she was real. Every other museum storefront was occupied by wax figures, each one creepier than the last. Encountering a real person amid this plasticized landscape was akin to meeting an earthling on Mars -- it was a shock to the senses.

    A cynic might say Sandy Allen was fortunate in that she was paid to essentially be herself each day in front of that museum. A romantic knows her life there was as tragic as the human condition gets without physical abuse.

    A quote contained in her obituary brought me back nearly 30 years.

    "At Guinness there were days when I felt like I was doing a freak show," Allen said. "When that feeling came too often, I knew I had to come back home."

    That sadness was evident when I encountered her some 30 years ago. I recall my friend Scott and I approaching her and asking questions that she'd heard a million times before.

    How tall are you?

    Were you tall as a kid?

    How tall are your parents?

    Do you play basketball?

    Sandy answered each of them with kindness. She overlooked our insensitivity and invited us to sit in her big oak chair. I recall feeling like a king on a throne, the chair so big that my feet dangled in the air a full foot off of the ground.

    There was a sadness in her eyes, evident to even self-absorbed teenagers. Walking away from her, we commented on her melancholy disposition and wondered how anyone could be unhappy on the Street of Fun.

    Something else revealed in her obit spoke to the tragedy of her life. It was revealed that Allen wrote Guinness in 1974 because she desired companionship with someone her own height.

    "It is needless to say my social life is practically nil and perhaps the publicity from your book may brighten my life," she wrote.

    Guinness responded to that plea the way promoters always do -- with opportunistic glee. It wasn't the fact they employed Sandy Allen that was wrong, but the manner in which they utilized her services.

    If Guinness had wanted to treat her with dignity, they could have set her up in a spot within the museum that befitted her stature as the world's tallest woman. She should have been the climax to the museum experience. After you looked at all of the displays and videos, your trip should have culminated by meeting the real, live Sandy Allen.

    Instead, Guinness used Allen as the lure. She was the prostitute's fishnet stockings, the three-card monte dealer's upturned queen. Her sole purpose was to separate dollars from wallets. She was the ultimate come-on on a street with more of them than you could count with an abacus.

    It speaks to her character that, despite this betrayal, Allen never became jaded. She saw the fact that she was born with an out-of-control pituitary gland as a gift from God. She treated her abnormality as an opportunity to reach children and teach them the virtue of tolerance.

    Friend Rita Rose said of Allen's height, "She embraced it. She used it as a tool to educate people."

    Rose also explained why Sandy Allen felt most comfortable speaking with children.

    "She loved talking to kids because they would ask more honest questions," Rose said. "Adults would kind of stand back and stare and not know how to approach her."

    It's got to be an awful thing to be gawked at everywhere you go. We're all freaks on one level or another, but for most people what differentiates us isn't discernible to the naked eye. We can hide our abnormality in the layers of polite conversation and go along to get along.

    For others, such a feat is impossible. The 500-pound man cannot blend in at the local supermarket. The woman with the facial burns can't go to the movies without feeling self-conscious. The young boy with Muscular Dystrophy has to move through the mall on his arm braces with a hundred sets of eyes upon him, while the young girl with the cleft palate fears that she might never be asked out on a date.

    The only difference between them and you is a few levels of subterfuge. Sandy Allen was as out in the open as a person can possibly be. How she handled herself speaks volumes about her character and compassion for the plight of anyone labeled "different."

    Sandy Allen was born in Indiana, and there she died. Indiana governor Mitch Daniels had the pleasure of meeting her, and had this to say upon learning of her passing: "Then, and from a distance, I admired very much the way she handled a uniquely difficult situation with uncomplaining grace."

    Uncomplaining grace is something we should all aspire to in our lifetimes. While I believe in the existence of heaven, I'm not quite sure what it's like there. For Sandy Allen, I hope it's a place where she can go about her business unnoticed by those around her.

    For those of us still aspiring to ascend, my wish is that we stand as tall as she did throughout her lifetime.

  2. #2
    Member speaker's Avatar
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    Oh. Fate dealt her a bad hand and I hope she's at peace.

    There was a documentary on that tallest woman in China. She is sickly and needs a lot of medical help just to live. China finally stepped in and with a lot of free services by doctors and just plain good nutrition, is being relieved of a lot of her symtoms.

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    Unregistered bigpoppapuff's Avatar
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    old news...but sad..


    Aug 13, 2008 ... A woman who grew to be 7 feet, 7 inches tall and was recognized as the world's tallest female died early Wednesday.....

  4. #4
    Member wheresthesun's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bigpoppapuff
    old news...but sad..


    Aug 13, 2008 ... A woman who grew to be 7 feet, 7 inches tall and was recognized as the world's tallest female died early Wednesday.....
    ...and yet when your threads are challenged, you go ballistic.

  5. #5
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    Finding her a casket was undoubtedly a "tall" order.

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